Dreaming and Envisioning
Dear brothers and sisters,
Many of you have just finished the Ten Days Before Pentecost prayer initiative and celebrated the outpouring the Spirit on Pentecost Sunday. I’m not sure how many of you experienced the sound of a mighty rushing wind and tongues of fire, but I sincerely hope that your hearts have been opened to the presence and working of the Holy Spirit for greater fruitfulness in the mission that He’s called you to.
I am still quite inwardly engaged by Peter’s reference to Joel’s prophecy regarding generations and genders and the kind of spiritual activity that Joel predicted: envisioning, dreaming and prophesying.
I am freshly convinced that that kind of activity is an indication of true spiritual vitality – the desire to see God work in the future and the hope that I would be used effectively in that future. There really is a genuine Holy Spirit kind of dreaming that is rightly connected to the truth of God’s Word. Sometimes God intrudes, as we present ourselves to Him, as Paul and Barnabas experienced in Acts 13 at Antioch. The first missionary journey was a result of that dreaming. But there’s also the kind of dreaming and envisioning of Paul seeking to go back to nurture these churches and ultimately to get to Spain and be a blessing there.
One of the great truths of this kind of spirituality is that it applies to every believer, not merely those who will be leaders or go out on missionary journeys, but to the “lowliest servant” who does the kind of work that goes unnoticed and doesn’t appear to have high impact. I have thought a number of times of what happened in the heart of a little Albanian nun to provoke her to spend her life in the worst parts of Calcutta and try to help the most despised and disregarded segment of that incredibly poor population. What’s the point? What did Mother Theresa accomplish? Well, as far as I can see, with blazing light she communicated the unlimited grace and compassion of God for all of His people. It must have started with a thought to which she yielded her heart, and prayer. It became a vision and a movement and has brought honor to God and His kingdom. I think that’s mostly what it takes – to see myself as a servant of God and available to be used however God wants to use me; to pray along the lines that He appears to be nudging me; and to begin to act in small ways along that path.
Why do you think that we don’t dream and envison? Honestly, I’d like you to think about that. What are the obstacles? Is it the raw busyness and overwhelming nature of modern Western existence? I’m sure that’s part of it. Or could it be that I’ve just gotten flat out lazy in my spirit and I have lost a kind of heart for the Kingdom of God? Possible? Undoubtedly, we all go through seasons like that. But Pentecost is a reminder that the mission is still afoot and we are God’s people, sent on God’s mission. Further, we are a people, each one of us, who have been gifted by the Holy Spirit to fulfill that mission. And if we have gifts of the Holy Spirit within us, we all have permission to dream and envision, not only within the gifts that God’s given us, but for the whole mission of God of which we are part.
So, now we are in the days after Pentecost. But that’s where the real content of the book of Acts takes place. Twenty-seven chapters of flat-out mission, inaugurated in one day when God’s Spirit engaged 120 people. I want to encourage you as leaders to press into God yourselves, to ask for that fresh wind of the Spirit to sweep through your soul and create visions and dreams that will result in the kind of expressions that honor God and portray His kingdom to a world so fragmented that, as God said to Jonah regarding Ninevah, “They don’t know their right hand from their left.” We ought to know at least that much, but even more, how those hands were created to make something wonderful for God.
God bless you all as you head into the days of summer. Pray for us in St. Paul, as Christ Community Church and St. Paul Fellowship become one and portray a unique dynamic within the ARC. I am greatly encouraged by this direction and looking forward to the kind of ways that God will fill us out and grow us up.
In the love of Christ,
Ned